Chapter VIII

The Mickleton election was a blow that sounded through England. The hardy mountaineers of Wales, to whom our discussions, save where they regard religion, so rarely appeal, knew that the manhood of the slate quarries was free; sailors, newly landed from distant climes, though singularly apathetic as a class to the glories of our party system, found themselves expected to lift one of their many glasses to the Mickleton election; and in the bowels of the earth the brawny miners of Durham alluded to Mr. Clutterbuck and his success in the simplest and most poignant of terms.

The thoughtful who direct the development of English Socialism had seen, long before, the capital nature of the crisis, and naturally deplored an expression of public opinion which by forbidding forced labour set so powerful an obstacle in the path of the ideal state; the strict party organs of the Opposition were also bound to deplore the result, but every sheet of independent position was agreed as to the significance of the election and few judges indeed since Jeffries have incurred the epithets, whether grave or severe, which had so long been withheld, and now, on the morrow of the election, fell from all sides upon the honest but narrow and pointed head of Mr. Justice Hunnybubble--for Welch (concurring) was by now quite ignored, and the stronger man was the target of renown.

The wide field of suburban, colonial, American and Indian thought commanded by the _Spectator_ might indeed have murmured at the new privilege which the working classes threatened to acquire, had not that review with singular manliness and courage stood out at the critical moment with a strong declaration in favour of the spirit which Mickleton had shown.

"England," the editor did not hesitate to pen, "is not tied to a formula or a syllogism, but to freedom slowly broadening down from precedent to precedent,"[5] and he went so far as to contemplate with unflinching courage--nay, to command--the release of Fishmonger and Another, for whom the principal Halls had already begun an active competition.

The very different world which is so largely influenced by the _Winning Post_ was equally sound, and the weekly character, "In a Glass House," of that powerful instrument of national opinion was Mr. Clutterbuck himself, characterised as a sportsman, excused for his personal sobriety, portrayed in a top hat, frock coat, trousers, spats, buttoned boots, and perhaps thirty years less than his actual age.

The _Sporting Times_ had two good jokes heartily sympathetic with the judgment of Mickleton. _Punch_ published upon the great verdict a set of beautiful verses which will long be remembered in our English parsonages; and the _Daily Mail_ headed their leader "The Burial of Harmanism."

England was awake; the great principle of unilateral compulsion had taken firm root, and never more would the detestable miasma of Continental pedantry threaten the free life of our land.

For the Government the position was not easy, though it was evidently one to be faced. No Administration can afford to treat the Bench lightly. Buffle might be in trouble any day. They had, moreover, at least three great measures in hand, commanding no considerable popular support; one which the electorate had not heard of and another quite odious to it. This sudden and spontaneous demonstration by a London borough against a judicial decision which had nothing to do with party or policy was a factor of grave disturbance in that routine of the House of Commons which is as regular in its way as the breathing of a profound sleep. The Cabinet was dispersed in Monte Carlo, Devonshire, Palermo and New York, a decision could not be come to upon so grave a matter for many days to come, and yet an early opening of the session in January was plainly imperative. The intensity of feeling against the judgment which Mr. Clutterbuck's election had condemned, grew with every day, and the young head of the National party, who suffered somewhat from the right lung and filled the Premiership so brilliantly and so well, had indeed a heavy problem to resolve.

* * * * *

The first act of Mr. Clutterbuck when he returned, the morning after his triumph, to his beautiful Surrey home, was to sign a cheque for yet another thousand pounds, and to enclose it with a letter of heartfelt emotion to the funds of the Party. He expressed in this letter his indifference to the particular object for which, in the Party's judgment, it might be used, and assured Mr. Delacourt that it was but a slight acknowledgement on his part of what was the duty of every man in support of those principles which have made England great. Charlie Fitzgerald thoroughly approved of his action, and was free to point out that its spontaneous character would render it of double effect. To this action there succeeded an interval of repose.

For several weeks a round of social recreation dispelled the strain to which Mr. Clutterbuck had been subjected during the course of his campaign; his house was filled with a perpetually changing attendance of friends to enjoy a few days of his company, and to congratulate him upon the honour of which he had proved worthy. Nor did many of them forget to hint--some of them deliberately declared--that it was but the gate to further and greater honours: though it must be admitted that the now ageing politician neither desired nor expected promotion to Cabinet rank.

As the procession of City men, Croydon acquaintances and earlier friends who had now rallied to Mr. Clutterbuck in his declining years filled "the Plâs," Charlie Fitzgerald very honourably took the holiday he had heartily earned. He went down, at Mary Smith's pressing invitation, to her quiet but historic Habberton upon the borders of Exmoor, found there the society of his boyhood, and was the life of that little party, with his amusing imitations of social customs in the suburbs, his frank pleasure in the champagne which he had chosen for his cousin, his madcap bouts upon the little Devon ponies which were incapable of throwing so large a rider, and his jests which never exceeded the limits imposed by the presence of women, several of whom were devout adherents of the Christian faith.

With all this a certain new glory surrounded Charlie, a glory reflected from the result of the Mickleton election. The people among whom he was for the moment a companion at quiet but historic Habberton were not of a kind to exaggerate the influence of a by-election upon the general scheme of English government; but they did appreciate that here was one of themselves who could weigh the temper of a great constituency and could understand very different classes of men; for Charlie was not slow to let them understand the part he had played in the business.

During any mention of that campaign his cousin Nobby looked so thoroughly miserable that it went to Charlie's soft Irish heart.

Nobby had had plenty of money once. He had stood for Parliament when he was barely of age, more as a freak and to please his mother than with serious intentions of political life; but a defeat by over 3000 votes coupled with the gradual dissipation of his fortune had rendered him more sensitive than was perhaps healthy. A place had been found for him in the Heralds' College, but the salary was miserably small, and apart from the prestige of such a position, he would almost have been willing to throw up the perpetual application it demanded and to go and live quietly hunting and shooting at his mother's place in Derbyshire: for though the widow had herself but a small dower, she could afford to receive her spendthrift son.

It was a good thing that he had not yet completed that intention; for Charlie, as he watched him in those days at Habberton, found a piece of work for him which might well lead to greater things. He took his cousin out one morning to see the stags fed in the new Bethlehem, warned Mary Smith that they wanted to be alone, and as they crossed the park he proposed to Nobby a visit to The Plâs.

Nobby could see nothing in it at all; nay, he met the proposition with horror, until it dawned upon him that perhaps some definite and tangible action was in the wind, and he asked in the most natural manner whether he could look forward to any of the Ready?

Charlie was impatient.

"My good Nobby," he said, "don't you know how things are done in this world? They're bound to give him a handle!"

"That," said Nobby in a refined manner, "makes my dream come true, but really, if you think it affects me----"

"Good God!" said Charlie, "don't you see where you come in?"

"I could go and pump him," said Nobby wearily, "but, oh lord, Charlie, if you only knew! I must have pumped fifty of 'em this year. The worst are the Johnnies that want Supporters. We'll give them Mullets and even a Fesse Argent or two, but we're very rigid about Supporters," he said solemnly. "You don't get Supporters over the counter, I can tell you."

"Nobby," said Charlie, waving all this trash aside, "to put it plainly, you got to go and tell the old boy how it's done ... I mean ... you got to let him know how it's done. Don't make a fool of yourself," he added, looking doubtfully at his young cousin, and wondering whether this piece of generosity were wise or not, "I'm not going to be butchered to make a Roman holiday."

"I'll go, Charlie," said Nobby humbly, "I understand. But can't anyone see to something of the Ready? After all, I've got to get there, and I shall have to give something to the servants."

"I'll ask Mary," said Charlie nobly.

"No you don't," shouted Nobby, "she turned me down this morning. Damnably!"

"Oh, but this is work," said Charlie reproachfully.

Nobby looked grim. "It's spondulicks, anyway," he said. And Charlie very reluctantly pulled out four pounds and a few shillings.

Nobby pocketed it without much gratitude.

"You know, Nobby," said Charlie, watching his expression, "if you pull it off sensibly, he won't forget you!"

"Oh, I know all about that," said Nobby wearily. "They're awfully grateful, but one never gets one's fingers on the flimsies. I'll make a last shot, anyhow."

Charlie Fitzgerald did not stand on ceremony; he knew the kind hearts of the Clutterbucks too well; he wrote a longish letter to Mrs. Clutterbuck about his cousin Robert in the Heralds' College, introduced a word or two about his late father and grandfather, the Lord Storrington of the famine, said the lad would be stopping in their neighbourhood and would really like to come over, enclosed a stamped envelope, "The Hon. Robert Parham, Habberton Park, Barnstaple," and within forty-eight hours Nobby, carefully primed as to where he had been stopping in the neighbourhood of Croydon, and whom exactly he would see and meet, was off to pass a week-end at The Plâs.

His ironical temper and obvious poverty seemed at first ill-suited to the merchant's table, but Mrs. Clutterbuck herself forgave him when she discovered, as she immediately did, the warm heart which lay beneath these external disabilities: by the Sunday night his conversation was already absorbing; she begged him to return, and he did.

The second visit was far prolonged. They could not bear to let the merry boy go, and his frank anecdotes upon the leading men of the day, intimate acquaintance with most of whom he could proudly claim, afforded them not only amusement, but the deeper pleasure of a profound interest, and it was in connection with these that he took such frequent occasion to deride the too facile conference of titles which, as he perpetually affirmed, was the jest of the world in which he moved.

He quoted more than one case in which without any subscription to objects of public utility, wealthy men, merely because they were wealthy, had been granted a baronetcy; he joked about his work in the Heralds' College, contrasting such gewgaws as parvenus descend to buy, with the honest old yeoman crest upon the silver of his host, and was especially severe upon the establishment of fixed prices for public honours; a practice which he declared almost worse than the granting of titles to the unworthy.

Of the guests who listened to him with the respect due to an expert, few ventured to contradict or even to criticise, but it must be admitted that Sir Julius Mosher, who had been knighted years ago on the occasion of Cornelius Hertz's reception at the Guildhall, was inclined one evening at Mr. Clutterbuck's table to be a trifle interrogatory.

"I never gave a penny," he said, "and I think I may say that for most men in the City," he added, looking round the table and meeting with a murmur of approval.

"I would never dream of saying such a thing," said Nobby warmly. He blushed a little, but looked at the same time so kindly and so sincere that his embarrassment did but enhance the good opinion all had formed of the young man.

"Thank God there are still some honours left that _are_ honours! Now, I suppose nearly all the new peers ... take the new peers ... nobody minds; and then most baronets ... since _this_ Government came in.... Still they _did_ pay. And I do say what I most hate in the whole affair is regular prices fixed. It isn't cricket."

"But, after all," said a Mr. Hutchinson, a doctor of considerable means, and of a solid, quiet judgment. "What do you mean by 'fixed'?" He put up his hand to dissuade interruption, and to Nobby's horror opened in the intonation of a set speech: "Remember the importance of what you are saying. Chrm! You are in the Heralds' College, and you hear a great many things. Chrm! No one denies for a moment that large subscriptions to some public object are often rewarded by some public honour.... I may be a little easy-going, but I really don't see any harm in it. Everybody knows it is--er--done; the recipients are worthy men and they are just the kind of men who have always been made knights and baronets, and even peers when they were important enough."

The brief discourse was well and clearly delivered; it earned the gratitude of all those older men around the table in whom the art of living had bred common sense and to whom short speeches at dinner were familiar; to do justice to Nobby, he was the first to let his sense of justice return.

"You mustn't take me too seriously," he said in his decent smiling way. "One talks in shorthand. I don't mean a real tariff, nobody could mean that, but I think that in the past, 'specially about ten years ago, turn of the century and with all the fuss of the war on, they _did_ hand things about.... Oh, there were orders as well, you know."

Mrs. Clutterbuck smiled at him from the head of the table. "No one blames you, I'm sure," she said. "But Mr. Parham there was not too much recognition of the people who stood by their country then." She looked meaningly at her husband. "I'm sure if you made a list of those pro-Boers who've been...."

"Half time, Mrs. Clutterbuck, half time," said Sir Julius Mosher kindly. He had been among the most prominent opponents of our Colonial policy at that moment, and he felt bound to protest against the word Pro-Boer, but his protest was singularly sweet and winning and did not for a moment disturb the harmony of the evening.

The ladies retired, not to the Persian room which was rarely inhabited in winter, but to the snuggery. Nobby held the door for them as they went out, and added to his laurels by the perfect apology he made for tearing Lady Mosher's train.

The conversation between the men drifted on to other subjects, foxhunting, lithia water, the Territorial army, and all the rest upon which men of this stamp are particularly engaged; while Dr. Hutchinson, who feared he might have offended the enthusiastic young fellow, took a chair by his side, and upon Nobby's mentioning the name of his grandfather, Lord Storrington, furnished the most interesting and voluminous details upon that nobleman's last illness, operation, and death.

Much later, when all the rest had said good-night, Nobby, who loved a farewell glass, followed his host to the old smoking-room, preserving his balance in the dark corridor by a hand upon either wall. They sat together exchanging the common-places that will pass between newly found friends when they are at last alone, until Mr. Clutterbuck, who had spent a few moments with his wife arranging matters for the following day, turned to a subject he could not wholly ignore, and said with perfect tact:

"I beg your pardon, but now that we're alone, tell me, how much really is there in what you were saying? I know there's more in it than those gentlemen say, and you think there's more in it, don't you?" For Mr. Clutterbuck, like many men newly introduced to the necessary compromises and halftones of our manifold political life, was still ready to receive secrets that seemed to him dramatic and to criticise from close at hand methods which during the most of his life he had only known as vague rumours.

Nobby very thoughtfully chose from the silver box beside him a gigantic cigar, and said, holding the matchbox in his hand ready to strike:

"Tell you the truth, there's precious little," and having said that he laughed with the laugh of a boy, and suddenly subsided into his chair.

"Well, but," said Mr. Clutterbuck, without insistence, "there must be this much in it, that a man who sacrifices more than a certain amount and is known to be a hearty supporter of the tariff, for instance, or of the evacuation of Egypt, or ... or let's say what the Government did last June in Burmah would be noticed, I suppose?"

"Oh yes," said Nobby, speaking as of a common-place. "But that's true of course of anything. If a man's known to 've done something _really_ handsome, silly not to recognise him. 'Sides which, it's _done_, always done. What I was complainin' of was the people who really haven't got any claim at all. F'r instance," he said, lowering his voice and looking over his shoulder for a moment, "Johnnie Higgins...."

"Sir John Higgins?" said Mr. Clutterbuck, startled at the name of that prominent country gentleman.

"Yes," went on Nobby simply, "Johnnie _Higgins_ wouldn't 've had anything in the course of nature. Of course he _wanted_ it, and he hasn't got a son, an' one way an' another.... But still, there _was_ the regulation price of five thousand."

"Well, five thousand," said Mr. Clutterbuck, his head bent well backwards, his eyes regarding the ceiling, and his tone expressing the enormity of the sum----

"No, but," continued Nobby, up on his feet again,--"I _do_ object, and so would you if you were where I am; five thousand means different things to different men; now just because a man is in parliament and weighs in with five thousand...."

Here he was silent. He had some regard for truth and he felt that his temperament was running away with him. How many men he could call to mind who had given first and last twenty, thirty, forty thousand pounds to some great cause and had remained the plain commoners they were born. It would have been well for him and for his host if he had spoken aloud as the confession passed through his thought, but Nobby was as weak as he was good-natured and that thought remained unexpressed.

Mr. Clutterbuck continued his theme. Financial success had bred in him a dependence upon fact and figure. Five thousand pounds was a very large sum, but it was tangible; it was precise; one could write it down.

"I know men," he said slowly, "to whom that would be a capital: believe me, a considerable capital. Why, there's Doctor Hutchinson," he said, lowering his voice, and bending forward, "if you will believe me" (in still lower tones) "that man hasn't got five thousand now. He's not worth it." He pressed his lips together as men do after a final statement, and said by way of conclusion: "They're all like that, that call themselves 'professional men.' Here to-day and gone to-morrow, except they take out a patent or something, or really go in for business, and precious few can do that."

"You're quite right," said Nobby, who was bored and who had been thinking anxiously about the hour of next morning's breakfast. "I never had any myself," he added genially, and Mr. Clutterbuck smiled at the jest of the grandson of the Earl of the Creation of the year of the Act of the Union of England and of Ireland.

Nobby yawned and sloshed soda water into his glass. "Well, it's a lot of rot, isn't it?" he said, and clinched the conversation down.

They went up to bed that night, Mr. Clutterbuck, after apologising, as husbands will, for the lateness of the hour, turned many of his remarks to his wife upon this corrupt practice, weighing its probabilities and its exaggerations, until that lady first passed judgment and then imposed silence.

* * * * *

Charlie Fitzgerald should have been home upon the Wednesday next. A chance whim had taken him to Monte Carlo, from whence he telegraphed that he could hardly be back before Saturday. In the interval Mr. Clutterbuck, sauntering into town upon one of those clear December days which often prolong autumn into the heart of winter, happened to call at Delacourt's house, but he was at the office at Peter Street. Mr. Clutterbuck immediately sought him in that place and was received with something more cordial than courtesy, and many a merry laugh was exchanged between himself and the young organiser before the chief business of his visit was mentioned.

Even when the time came for that, Mr. Clutterbuck showed unaccountable nervousness, but he had taken full counsel; he knew his wife's opinion; his own mind was made up; he had not even waited for Charlie Fitzgerald. When, therefore, he had said good-bye and was just stepping out of the door he suddenly, as though by an afterthought, pulled an envelope from his pocket and said sunnily:

"Oh, Mr. Delacourt, I'd almost forgotten this. I could have posted it--but it's just as well to give it you now I have it. Read it at your leisure. Read it absolutely at your leisure."

He nodded twice and was gone.

Mr. Delacourt opened the envelope, fully expecting some little protest or other. To his wild astonishment there came out a note of not more than four lines, and a cheque for £3000.

Bozzy Delacourt had seen a good deal of life; he had pawned many articles before his father's death, and had mortgaged not a little land between that event and his marriage. He had seen many cheques signed by many men for many purposes; but the like of this he had never seen.

"What the devil!" he said, looking at the cheque as one would at a strange and unexpected beast. "What the devil----" He went over to the window, leant against it and murmured to himself: "If he's mad something ought to be done. He might make a scene in the House. By God!" he added to himself with a sudden change of expression, "it would be Maraschino and Ice to see him passing the stuff on to one of those journalists during a division, or endowing the p'licemen, or something.... Wish I'd known men like that in '92! I'd have pulled old Sam Lewis's leg." The thought set his eyes adream and afire. "I'd have played him," he added with sudden vicious earnestness, "I'd have played him like a bloody fish!"

And having thus relieved his mind, he prepared the cheque for passing it in, then thought he'd better show it to his chiefs, locked it into a particular drawer, and went out.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 5: Tennyson.]